If you get your nails done at a salon or have your lawn mulched next spring, the service could be taxed under a plan Illinois lawmakers are considering to help fill a multibillion-dollar hole in the state budget.

The idea comes as part of a proposal to increase state revenue tied to a Senate compromise intended to break the state’s two-year stalemate over an annual spending plan. The “grand bargain” stalled last month before the revenue measure came to a vote.

Thumbs-down: To gambling expansion is yet another nonsolution to Illinois budget woes. There certainly are problems with what’s been described as a grand bargain, particularly a massive income tax hike, but it looked for a moment as if a solution to the lack of a state budget was at least on the horizon. Instead, the shiny object was new gambling licenses for Chicago, Lake County, Rockford and other locations around the state, which were approved by the Illinois Senate. This is no jackpot for weary Illinois taxpayers.

Illinois is again betting on gambling, but it appears the goal is not to win the pot but just to collect the buy-in.

State lawmakers are proposing six new casinos, which they expect will generate $1 billion in setup fees. The license fee is $100,000 for the Chicago-area casinos with an extra $30,000 for each slot machine or seat at a blackjack table.

A new bill to raise the Illinois minimum wage to $15 an hour is expected to be introduced in the state House this week as Democratic representatives revive a push they had largely abandoned over the past several years.

State Rep. Will Guzzardi, D-Chicago, who plans to be the lead sponsor of the legislation, hopes Illinois follows the lead of California and New York, which last year approved laws to advance toward $15 amid growing support across the country for boosting the incomes of the lowest-paid workers. Seventeen other states began this year with minimum wage hikes of varying degrees.

A new study by Pew Charitable Trusts tried to measure how much states spend on higher education. The challenge is measuring spending in the form of tax breaks like Illinois and most states provide. Most states simply don’t know and Pew couldn’t fully measure it, they concluded. Only nine states have enough data to really tell, Pew says. Illinois is not among those nine that know. And higher education isn’t the only place where that kind of spending in Illinois is blind.

Direct spending is measured and reported. But spending in the form of tax breaks is no less real, and often isn’t measured and reported. It’s certainly in the billions for total state spending on higher education — the nine measurable states alone spend over a billion dollars in the form of tax breaks, according to Pew.

Chance the Rapper donated $1 million to the Chicago Public Schools last week with promises of more, trying to bolster arts and after-school programs that have suffered from never-ending budget cuts.

But the city’s broke school system has quietly maintained its own way to contribute to schools and programs for 30 years.

The presidents of Illinois’ public universities last week gave an ominous assessment of the state’s high education system and how badly damaged it’s been by not only the ongoing budget impasse but by years of neglect.

And the future doesn’t look much better.

Last month, Mayor Rahm Emanuel gave what he termed a “major address” on infrastructure before an invitation-only crowd at the Chicagoland Laborers’ District Council Training & Apprentice Fund center on the West Side.

The mayor’s political supporters and city officials who received the invites were greeted by large poster boards with various photos of Emanuel lining the hallways throughout the union hall and peppered across the large room where he delivered the speech. While there were plenty of photos of the mayor wielding shovels in the union hall, he didn’t break much new ground in the largely political address. He reviewed projects the city has tackled in recent years and laid out new ones, almost all of which already had been announced.

The president of Chicago’s police union says he’s not worried about being in a runoff election for his position.

Election results came in Friday, and incumbent Fraternal Order of Police president Dean Angelo didn’t take the 51 percent of the vote required to win. He got almost 35 percent.

A proposed property tax freeze for Lisle has become a central issue in the village’s mayoral race.

Chris Pecak, who is challenging longtime Mayor Joseph Broda, says he believes a property tax freeze for the village is possible if officials eliminate wasteful spending and increase the number of businesses in town.

Mercer County Board members on Tuesday approved borrowing up to $450,000 to cover a revenue shortfall.

The county also has issued a hiring freeze until June.

The state’s video gaming system has proved to be a boon for businesses and municipalities that never benefited from riverboat gambling revenue before the first legal video terminals switched on more than four years ago.

More than 23,000 video gambling terminals have come online in Illinois bars, restaurants, convenience stores and cafes since the state-monitored system became operational in fall 2012. In fiscal year 2016, revenue from the machines surpassed $1 billion for the first time.